


Spring fever

by ricemais



Category: Food Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, M/M, can either be interpreted romantically or not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 14:25:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16620725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ricemais/pseuds/ricemais
Summary: Drunken spring nights without hope, like this one.





	Spring fever

* * *

 

 

Tortoise Jelly arrived in the Forgetful Courtyard on the final day of spring.

 

How exactly he ended up there, he no longer could recall. Perhaps it was the words his late Master Attendant once uttered. After burying her daughter, without a care for his grave injuries, he withdrew into himself and suffered. Half awake in fever dreams, he saw the two ladies in his life again*, mother and daughter camping beneath a sea of blossoming peach trees. The child, rosy-cheeked and giddy, fell over as she chased after petals drifting in the air. Tortoise Jelly promptly lifted her up and fussed with concern but his Master Attendant just laughed.

 

“Master Attendant, you can’t just let her run around like that. What if she gets lost in the forest and can’t find her way home?“

 

But the young girl, too, started giggling. She jumped out from his arms and into her mother’s lap. Something in Tortoise Jelly’s heart withered, he was so happy to be with them, but he was aware this was a memory that in reality could never be. Suddenly, he heard his Master Attendant’s voice:

 

“ _Tortoise Jelly, when you are sad, seek the peach spring beyond this world._ ”

 

Those were the words she once said to him on her sick bed. In his dream, she was saying it again, her cheerful expression morphing into a jaded look as if all the happiness in her life had floated from her, away to the elusive peach blossom spring.

 

When Tortoise Jelly opened his eyes again, he was struck with violent grief. Agonising despair swirled in him like multiple tornadoes spinning at nauseating speed. Peach blossom spring, peach blossom spring, the words rolled off his tongue like a faint cloud of smoke from a burning stick of incense. He thought to himself, _I have to seek the peach spring_.

 

* * *

 

 

The peach blossom spring was a fable everyone in this kingdom knew by heart. Rumours had it that the Emperor, Heaven’s Child himself, was once fascinated by this ethereal land **. People also said that he knew exactly where it was and was friends with the God who cultivated the peach spring beyond this world. Tortoise Jelly always thought it was propaganda to make the tyrant Emperor seem supernatural, but his Master Attendant loved the tale. 

 

He did not know how long he wandered or when he passed out. When he woke up, he found himself inside a pavilion, beside a dark lake, only dimly lit by lanterns and flickering fireflies. There was a pleasant lightness to his body he did not feel before, he noticed that his wounds were bandaged and tended to, and next to him sat a young man with sunburnt hair, hugging a large round dumpling, fast asleep.

 

“You're up!”

 

The young man immediately exclaimed when he saw Tortoise Jelly, having suddenly jerked awake as if he had been nodding off while on duty. The dumpling leapt from his arms and danced around in the air. Tortoise Jelly could tell this man was a food soul. He thought to himself, _how strange, did food souls always need to sleep?_

 

“Don’t worry, your injuries should heal in no time,” the young man continued to speak as he smiled gently, “My friend Cloud Tea is a doctor… sort of. Now… just relax and make yourself at home.”

 

“Who are you? Where is this?” Tortoise Jelly attempted to sit up but the young man placed a hand on his shoulder to keep him down.

 

“Don’t push yourself… I am Wonton, this here is my familiar, Wanton, and you are in the…” He paused, his gaze drifting away like a boat without anchor, “You are in the peach spring beyond this world.” *** 

 

* * *

 

 

Of course, Tortoise Jelly quickly learned that he was not in the afterlife, or anywhere otherworldly. This was a no man’s land just outside of the kingdom, commonly referred to as the Forgetful Courtyard. _Forgotten sorrow_ ****. A comically languid name, just like the one who occupied it. “It was a peach blossom heaven just a week ago!” Wonton had said in defense when Cloud Tea explained to their injured guest about the location of the courtyard, “The flowers are gone now so it doesn’t look like it, but the river that flows into this lake runs through a forest of peach trees, this really is the peach blossom spring from the legends.” 

 

“Yeah, well,” Tortoise Jelly glanced at the young man, “I would’ve expected the peach spring beyond this world to not be affected by seasons of the mere mortals, you know.”

 

“Who isn’t affected by mortal matters? Even we as food souls…” Wonton’s expression softened as he reached out to touch a strand of his new friend’s long black hair, which fell through the gap between his fingers like a stroke of fine lacquered ink on white Xuan paper, “The point is, you have to see it to believe it. This place is where you come to forget your sorrows in the mortal world. Why don’t you stay until next spring, then? Pass the cold winter and watch the peach trees blossom with me.”

 

Tortoise Jelly did not give an answer to this. He simply turned away and gazed at the trees.

 

* * *

 

 

That was not the only time Wonton had asked him to stay. The man spoke as if he was an isolated poet from the fables. He drank tea during the day and sipped on cups of fragrant sorghum wine at night. Tortoise Jelly could not help but think that had the man been of mortal flesh, his body would have been destroyed by this kind of living habit. When he was not practicing calligraphy, Wonton buried himself in scrolls upon scrolls of folk literature, or simply gazed vacantly into the garden. The man sent the dumpling spirit to do all his chores and laughed whenever Tortoise Jelly scolded him for being lazy. And he kept asking, day and night, for Tortoise Jelly to stay.

 

“You seem awfully lonely.” Tortoise Jelly said to him one particularly hot evening with many stars and fireflies, when they were drinking together in the pavilion on the lake. The other man let out a soft laugh before falling silent again, his head rested on the wooden railing. He had thought Wonton had already fallen asleep when the young man suddenly spoke:

 

“Do you hear? These cicadas cry all summer long. Lonesome, lonesome, lonesome *****. They only cry that one word, until they die.” 

 

Wonton sounded nonchalant, but Tortoise Jelly felt sharp claws clutching upon his heart. The hot summer air was thick and heavy. A strange, inexplicable fear arose in him, as if he should not have been here, this was all wrong, _none of them were supposed to suffer like that_. He had responsibilities to keep, but what they were he was not sure of anymore.

 

Forgetful Courtyard. Even if one forgets all sorrows, the facts that they happened still remains. Some people were simply not as fortunate as others. Fate was decided just like that, the inferiority is innate, carved in stone.

 

The cicadas’ harrowing cries pierced into Tortoise Jelly’s heart like a silver knife. He felt as if the woman who gave him form from the void was here again, haunting him from beyond this world. _When you are sad, seek the peach spring_. The porcelain cup slipped from his hand, making a beautiful clear sound as it hit the ground and broke apart. He mechanically turned his head and stared absently at Wonton. In the dark, his light hair, clothes and skin almost seemed spectral, for reasons Tortoise Jelly could not fathom, he looked fragile. But in a firm tone, Wonton proceeded to tell him something he would never forget.

 

“Let go of your old stories. Things others told you, or you keep telling yourself to explain why everything is the way it is. That is the past, the past is irrelevant. Focus on new things. Write a new tale, compose a fable that will support yourself.”

 

* * *

 

 

Tortoise Jelly did not end up staying at the Forgetful Courtyard after all.

 

In an elusive summer of deep midnight blue and many woven nets of stars, he suffered from woes that tore him asunder, ripped him apart. Into his heart a seed was sown, sprouting roots that stabbed him from within as his insides wilted into soil and mud. But from the mud, his heart rejoiced, amidst the anguish, flowers of the plant that grew from this seed — would one day bloom.

 

Tortoise Jelly departed on his journey knowing that Wonton would be waiting for him at the peach spring beyond this world, all by himself, as the cicadas cried, as the leaves were dyed red, as the branches died, through snow and through rain. Until the day when miles of peach blossoms bloomed as long as the river flowed, and spring once again graced upon this earth.

**Author's Note:**

> * Refers to Tortoise Jelly’s backstory.
> 
> ** Refers to Wonton’s backstory.
> 
> *** This phrase originated from the ancient Chinese fable “Record of the Peach Blossom Spring”. The Emperor (Wonton's Master Attendant) used it to express his secret wish.
> 
> **** Forgetful Courtyard is 忘忧舍, “the House of Forgotten Sorrows.”
> 
> ***** Here the sound of evening cicadas is compared to the pronunciation of 寂, “lonesome.”


End file.
